15.7.17

The
Chairman, Tiv Area Traditional Council (TATC), has constituted a
15-member committee to look into the problem of high bride price and
expensive burial ceremonies in Tiv land.

The
setting up of the committee was announced in a statement signed by Mr
Freddie Adagbe, Media Assistant to chairman of TATC, His Royal Majesty,
Prof. James Ayatse, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria
(NAN) in Makurdi on Saturday.

The
committee, which has three months to submit its report, is headed by
His Royal Highness, Chief Jam Gbinde Ter Ikyor, and had been directed to
investigate the reasons for the high bride price and recommend ways of
addressing the challenge.

The
TATC chairman lamented that the high bride price was hindering
bachelors and spinsters from getting married, noting that in some
cases, young men resorted to acquiring resources through unacceptable
means to meet up with the challenge.

Ayatse
also directed the committee to evolve ways of reducing cost incurred
during burials, lamenting that burials had now been turned to
ceremonies, adding that such practice was totally alien to Tiv culture.

According
to him, there is need to address the problem as borrowed trends of
expensive marriages and burials have inflicted poverty on families.

The
chairman called on relevant religious bodies and stakeholders to help
in eradicating such borrowed cultures, values and traditions that were
not beneficial to the growth and development of Tiv land.

The
chairman also directed the committee to suggest a decent dress code to
restore the dignity of the people, noting that ordinary people now put
on beads as if they were traditional rulers or title holders.

He
also called on the committee to suggest measures that would check the
indiscriminate sales of ancestral land by some family members who never
considered the plight of future generations.

Ayatse noted that such acts were responsible for incessant communal clashes in the area of recent.(NAN)